AOSP and production versions of Android (what’s on the Pixel) are not the same thing.

Been wondering this, or something like this.

I used to be good at Mario 1, but I cannot play it on emulators. It feels like there’s a delay. It feels a little like Mario is on ice, much like the ice levels of Mario 2. Mario is running, and I want to jump or stop, but there’s a noticeable delay and it makes me feel like my old ass has lost my touch. But playing any modern game, my reflexes are good enough. In a Nintendo to Nintendo comparison, I play Animal Crossing on the Switch, and sure enough, if I’m running and pull back on the stick, my villager skids at exactly the time I want them to. But on that same Switch with the same controller, I can’t control Mario in Mario 1 worth a damn. I do just fine in Super Mario Wonder, though.

(Side note, more to do with Animal Crossing than older games, but I’ve noticed a wired controller, plugged into the Switch dock via USB, with the Switch on the dock, gets more latency than the Switch in handheld mode, which I’m pretty sure uses Bluetooth to connect to its controllers, even if they’re physically connected — not 100% sure on that. But for one example, fishing — even the five-star rarity fish — is quite easy in handheld. But, with the wired connection, I mash A as soon as the fish bites, and it still slips my hook. Maybe the latency isn’t from the controller to the dock to the Switch, maybe it’s from the Switch to the dock to the TV (and speakers since I close my eyes and listen for the sound, which most animal crossers agree is the best way to fish).)

Nice — I absolutely use SponsorBlock on desktop (/laptop). Did not know it was on mobile.

It’s the other way around, it’s down to GrapheneOS to support other hardware. They simply choose to focus on Pixels.

You’re onto something with the AirTags but you haven’t got it quite right. Every Apple device participates in the Find My network, which means any Apple device marked as lost will have its location reported, anonymously, by every other Apple device it can communicate with. This is a good thing, unless you’re being stalked via an AirTag placed on your person, but Apple has taken pains to mitigate this issue. One shoe company recently released shoes with AirTag compartments so parents could track their kids, and the placement should mitigate the beeping they can emit. Honestly the AirTags and Find My network do more good than harm, the impact to devices participating in the Find My network is minimal, and if it’s your device that’s lost, you don’t want people opting out so thieves can get away with stealing your stuff.

The open source thing is largely a myth, though. AOSP is what’s open source. The version of Android on Pixel phones and Nexus before them was forked from that and bundles a lot of closed source stuff, like Google Play Services, Gmail, and more. But it’s close enough to AOSP that devs can target it and it should run on most/all Android forks.

So then Samsung and others take AOSP and they fork it and make their own OS that is based on Android. They are required per licensing to use Android branding if they want Play Store access. There are other rules, like Chrome and/or Google has to be on the main launcher page, Play Services has to be included… if they don’t play by the rules, they can still fork Android, they just can’t use the name Android… like Fire OS and Switch OS. (It’s unclear if modern Switches use any Android code. Before they were released they were rumored to have forked Android. Switches absolutely do not run Android apps, but the OS borrows several cues from Android design language.)

Not on Android. People love to stan for Android because “it’s open source,” but Android would have gone nowhere if Google didn’t buy it, and Google wouldn’t have bought it if they weren’t convinced it would let them scrape more personal data than Gmail. (And Andy Rubin made Android because he heard Steve Jobs say the iPhone would run OS X, and he thought he could probably whip up a Linux distro to run on a phone.)

You could get an iPhone and not run any apps by Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, or any of the other privacy-opposed companies. You’d also better change the default search off of Google. DuckDuckGo is an option. Ecosia might be. Not sure. The issue is, while Apple says they’re all about privacy, that’s based on them being a computer/hardware company first (and Google being a data company first). However, Apple is heavily leaning into services now — Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+, and more — and there are rumors they want their own search engine. So while Apple may be privacy strong now, you don’t know what they’ll be a year from now, or three, or five.

It’s like Tim Cook (Apple CEO) said about Facebook when they introduced the tracking limiter. “You can still give Facebook permission to track you all over the web, they just gotta get your permission first.” That’s true of privacy. You can still use Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, TikTok, and other privacy-violating companies’ products, but what you share is entirely up to you. You can use some of those services in Safari and block some tracking, or you can install the apps and allow it all. It’s up to you.

Or, you can buy a Pixel and reward Google’s business model, and put GrapheneOS on it. That is probably better, privacy-wise, than using an iPhone. But you’re still rewarding Google’s business model. And if they’re making so much money off your data that opting out isn’t even an option, why does the Pixel cost the same the iPhone does (and more, considering the Pixel Fold)? You are getting more RAM, but RAM is cheap. You’re not getting a better processor — Apple has won that race for years. Camera tech is about 50/50. Screen is up in the air — I think Apple’s is better, but Google et al use higher resolutions. Apple buys from the same companies but screens are made to spec which is why Apple’s are better than those by companies they buy from. Their spec is more demanding. “Good enough” is what passes in Android — it’s like how iPhones use NVMe and Androids use UFS. NVMe is more expensive, and it’s faster on paper, but in the real world? UFS is good enough. You wouldn’t see a difference, or a significant one, in real world usage. So what are you paying for in a Pixel? The lower specs plus the privacy/data factor should make the Pixel significantly cheaper… except Google is a publicly traded company, so they can’t sell it that low.

Apple may not be the best option, but they’re advertising that they are (with regards to privacy). And I think they’re trying. I’m not saying they’re saints. They are doing better than Google though. And you have to decide if that’s worth your money. And dealing with a crappy keyboard. The keyboard sucks.

I’m not sure. There have been times where I thought, this would be the perfect place for an ad break. And lo and behold… ad break. Sometimes they get cut off mid sentence and I think, either it’s automated, or maybe you’re right and they got a say but didn’t specify enough ad breaks so one was inserted semi randomly…

YouTube is trash. I was watching a cooking video, and I swear, after 60 seconds of ads, the YouTuber talked for maybe one whole minute before it went to ads again with a 60 second timer.

“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is the boilerplate answer, and fundamentally it’s correct, but also never forget that Jesus himself kicked over tables and brandished a whip at these people.

Like, you always think of Jesus as this soft-spoken, kind-hearted individual who always tried to help people. But when he came back to the temple and saw people were using it to try to peddle their wares under the guise and protection of religion, he called that out and threatened violence. And he was right to.

The true Christian response would be that Trump will be judged in the afterlife but that they still support what he’s doing in government… which is making things harder for people with darker skin and/or who are LGBTQ+. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that.

Ask them if they would allow their preteen daughter to stay the night with Trump and you’ll see where their feelings truly lie. Many of them would! Many of them would happily traffick their child to him hoping that she might be his fourth wife and their family would benefit. A few would tell you that the accusations against him are inventions of the liberals, but those people are never mentally sound.

I call myself rich, but if I don’t go to work I don’t get paid, and if I don’t get paid I can’t pay the rent… and out the door I went go.

People can call themselves Christians, but unless they actually follow the teachings of Christ, it doesn’t mean anything.

It seems to me that Intel themselves aren’t doing anything wrong here by letting the government take a stake in their business.

They never promised you privacy, they sell complex tiny calculators that add and compare ones and zeros trillions of times per second.

As a Mac user, I feel that it affirms Apple’s choice 5 years ago to design their own silicon. Apple made the right move.

Owners of current Intel chips should be fine. It’s future Intel chips I’d worry about. AMD is probably still fine. PC builders and enthusiasts still have a lot of good choices.

As for the government, I don’t really see how. 10% doesn’t give them enough clout to ask for a back door. The UK didn’t ask chip makers anyway, they went straight to Apple and asked for the encryption keys. Apparently they’ve dropped the request, but that’s not something that needs to be done at the CPU level. It’s also the government — they’re not gonna do it the best way. They’re not gonna do it the way a mad Linux geek would do it if they were a fascist dictator. Governments are still run by Boomers.

It’s more likely exactly what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders say it is: the government is investing in Intel so their investment through the CHIPS Act pays off. It’s just good business sense. Set aside the president’s nationalism and look at it strictly as a business decision. It actually makes sense, hence why Sanders is behind it as well.

I’m religious neutral (I don’t like the term atheist), and I’m fine with the Ten Commandments.

Work within the system to bust it open.

The first commandment says “thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In a monotheistic religion (one god), that seems nonsensical. What He’s really saying is you can’t put anything before God. Including money. Or greed.

Another one says “thou shalt not bear false witness,” which is to say “don’t lie,” but they can’t stop doing that.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s…” I forget. Ass is in my family’s KJV (meaning donkey of course) and that’s funny. But this is another good one. They need to stop coveting our freedom and what little we have left and stop stealing from the poor.

Why should we live by these rules if the people in power won’t? In that case the rules aren’t even arbitrary.

Thanks! I went and followed the discussion link the other guy posted. I saw one concern — the handling of voting. But someone/some people are going behind a lot of those comments and saying they fixed it based on user feedback. So that’s good. I also feel I understand the two (Lemmy and Piefed) and their relationship a bit more.

If it sounds like I’m a bit eager to learn, it’s because I like to help others, but to do that I have to understand things first.

So let me see if I understand you correctly. The “one I’m on now” you refer to in the third paragraph, meaning dbzer0, is an instance of Lemmy (along with others) that are federated (loosely united) together in the same feed.

You’re on piefed.social, so you’re federated with dbzer0 and the other Lemmy feeds. So it’s not like you’re on a whole other federated social network like Bluesky (which is more like Twitter whereas Lemmy is more like Reddit). But it has different programming, so you can access more/different features from your end than I can on mine, but we still have access to the same communities?

Still kinda struggling to understand how fediverse stuff works.

Thank you! Subscribed to both and found a few things to sub to in the second one.

Thank you! I’m mostly treating it like “Reddit but for left leaning people” and enjoying learning the differences.

I’m doing my part! Just joined a couple days ago. Thought I could stick with Reddit but it got too far to the right for me. They crossed a line I can’t ignore, but I like the format, so I’m here. I knew Reddit was going to be winding down soon so I didn’t put as much effort in. I’d like to start a couple communities here, whereas I wouldn’t have tried over there. I just hope the toxic people who run the communities there don’t see what I’m doing and try to invade. I mean we could use the numbers but not the toxicity — though I feel that that comes with any influx of new users.